While personal data breaches keep cyber security in the headlines, the topic of privacy lacks the drama of a high-profile hack. That is a shame, since privacy and cyber security are closely related. Privacy is usually defined as the right to be left alone,...
The recent data privacy scandal surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica has opened up an interesting period of collective soul-searching regarding huge tech firms that operate utilizing “big” data. The overarching question that is being asked and, frankly, still needs to be answered is “what...
At the recent 5G North America and Big Communications Event in Austin, Texas, the fanfare about 5G was not surprising. However, what continues to surpass expectations is the level of eagerness for it among enterprises, the breadth of potential use cases, and the accelerated...
Cost: it stays on top of mind. Whether it’s pricing a project, estimating for the quarter or budgeting for the next year, cost looms large.
So when a survey of WISPs from Clearfield this year revealed that deploying in a cost-effective manner is important, it...
Businesses have benefitted over the last few years from a wide variety of options for IT infrastructure, but edge computing has arrived and is redefining the way we approach today’s data center. Edge computing refers to compute, networking and storage capabilities that take place...
Today, you can get almost anything as a service: shipping as service (Amazon Prime), music as a service (Spotify), TV as a service (Netflix), mobility as a service (Uber), and, of course, infrastructure as a service (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform).
This...
There’s no doubt that mobile video is the megatrend no operator can ignore. Understanding what users are watching, for how long, when and in what format should be elementary for mobile network operators. However, rising encryption levels on networks make traffic analysis almost impossible...
Artificial Intelligence. The words themselves sound complex, and that may be off-putting to communications service providers (CSPs) struggling to determine how AI might help their business grow. There are so many questions for service providers. Why should you care about AI? Why now? What...
For years, 2G and 3G networks have provided businesses with appropriate connectivity — and ROI — for IoT applications. However, the cellular connectivity landscape is changing, as 2G and 3G will be phased out in favor of LTE technologies in the coming years. We...
Carriers have been smart when it comes to data plans — they’ve adapted plan offerings to consumer usage. It’s time for their phones to follow suit.
Consumers no longer think about how much data their game or video meme is eating up in the moment...
As we found with the recent Facebook/ Cambridge Analytica situation, companies and organizations across multiple sectors are collecting, managing, utilizing and processing vast amounts of consumer data every single day. This data, often stored across personal and company devices, is increasingly being accessed for...
The Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) business model first emerged in Japan in 1997. Since then, the global MVNO subscriber base has steadily grown and is expected to exceed the 300-million landmark soon. It is currently growing five times faster than the operator segment. The...
Some industries are regulated more heavily and strictly than others. For better or worse, the cryptocurrency market is practically free from regulations, while industries like cannabis-related products, are subject to much stricter laws and protocols.
The telecom industry is one that faces much stricter regulations,...
It has been a decade or so since society began to discover the many benefits of the cloud. Since then, online services have changed our lives: how we communicate with others, how we entertain ourselves, how we do business and run the infrastructure that...
Wireless will be hot during this year’s 2018 National Association of Broadcasters show is being held in Las Vegas this week. In years past, this show has been filled with all the new bells and whistles the television industry wanted to roll out. I...
Two years ago, I was welcoming our customers to the era of Software-Defined IT (SDIT). Today, that warm welcome still stands as more and more companies are embracing software-defined networking (SDN), SD-WAN, cloud migration, and software as a service (SaaS) technologies. Additionally, as the digital evolution of business exponentially accelerates, we see profound impacts...
Service providers are moving network infrastructure to the edge to support new data loads and traffic patterns driven by 5G and the IoT. By moving cloud, compute and processing power to the edge of the network, it’s possible to support the ultra-low latency, interactive...
Despite momentum, 5G standards work is not complete
The past several months has seen an explosion in 5G momentum. It seems that every week brings another high-profile demonstration or an announcement of a new trial. The result of all this attention has dramatically shortened everyone’s...
Six years ago, T-Mobile US was crashing and burning. It was the worst performer in all of wireless. In order to survive, they needed the right kind of new leadership with big ideas. So, they hired John Legere as CEO. He studied the wireless...
Steel in the Air President Ken Schmidt has some recent analysis of what the national distribution of 100,000 small cells over the next few years could look like, if you assume that deployment will more or less follow population. His estimates crown California as...
On April 8, a major shift is taking place in the wireless industry: the system and database that governs local number portability (LNP) and call routing in the United States — the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC) — is being switched over to a...
AI in the service provider space today is primarily focused on machine learning — a branch of AI that focuses on the development of intelligent computer programs that can predict future events more effectively than humans. These types of programs autonomously train themselves using...
With IoT and Smart City developments gathering pace, 5G mobile networks are expected to take on an unprecedented role in this, connecting enterprises, enabling new services and even driving new business models. Industry analysts forecast that consumer spending on mobile apps will reach over...
Wi-Fi has enjoyed a quasi-monopolistic usage of the 5 GHz in the last few years but that is changing as Multefire and LTE Unlicensed in general are making inroads in once considered “Wi-Fi” bands. We thus feel it is about time we ask how these new...
